The Economic Attribute

The Greek derivation of the word economics is “oiko” (house) “nomos” (management). Today the word is used to describe the management of an assortment of households, businesses, and governments. None of those are independent. They all depend on outside forces to allow them to be managed with civility, and efficiency.

Management is a way to increase success. Poor management decreases success, or worse, eliminates it. The word economic assumes successful management. Incompetent management is not economic. Economic loss is failure. It is not economic. It is anti-economic, antinomic.

Economics is ecology, and what is not economically ecological is not economic. There is exactly one Earth. The way people interact affects it, them, their future, and the future. Economics exists because people are capable of improving their environment, and failing to improve it has undesirable consequences.

People have the opportunity to work for, and protect each other. There are dire consequences for failing to do that. People can survive and thrive only if they are economically connected. They don’t make their own clothes, build their own houses, educate themselves, or protect themselves. People work for each other, protect each other, and inspire each other economically. The potential value of economics to humanity is infinite. Economic failure is catastrophic.

Just as hair, scales, feathers, and bones are naturally occurring attributes that determine how, and if different species survive, economics is a uniquely human attribute that determines what humanity is, what it can become, and if it can survive.

The attributes of different species, such as feathers, scales, or bones are genetically predetermined. No matter what the attitude or the behavior of the individuals who have them, neither the individuals, nor the community to which they belong can do little to either change their structure, or their utility. Conversely the human attribute of economics is affected by individual attitudes and behaviors. Its results are largely controllable by the individuals, and the communities they belong to, and by humanity as a whole. Survival, happiness, and health are economic deliverables. Economic failure erodes who people are, what they can become, and if they can exist.

War, injustice, and poverty are unnecessary economic failures that threaten the quality and existence of each human life, of all human lives, and the future of human existence. They are unnecessary. They can be economically abolished. That will not happen accidentally. Economics is a natural attribute. It is a resource that flows through time, a river of opportunity that must be navigated to avoid peril, and to achieve betterment.

The attribute of economics is not constrained by time. It existed when the first people walked the earth, and it will exist until there are no people. People have always had access to it. It will always hold an opportunity to improve being human. Staying ignorant, or being ignore-ant of economics is both unsatisfactory and inhumane. The economic attribute is how humans have, thus far, avoided extinction. Failing to study it and learn its lessons is dangerously unacceptable.

Earth exists as our shared environment. We share it with other people, and other forms of life. The economic attribute allows people to improve earth’s habitability. Availing a people to the economic opportunities is what allows humanity, safety, health, and happiness for this, and other generations.

The economic attribute is not a belief. It is reality that exists whether or not people understand it. A newborn calf receives no instruction. It makes many vain attempts to find milk, the life giving fluid that allows its heredity to be of consequence. Failing to feed makes the rest of its existence both short and miserable. Economics is the life giving fluid of humanity that allows its heredity to be of consequence.

The calf can do nothing to enhance the nutritive quality of the life-giving milk. It simply exists. It is real. Life depends on it. Economics is like that, except for the fact that people can increase the practical environmental benefits that can be derived from economics. Economics can be infinitely enhanced. It is the “milk of human kindness” with infinitely expanding possibilities. There were other cows prior to the birth of the calf. They all drank the milk of life as a prerequisite for being alive, but they could do little to improve the milk. It helped each cow on an individual basis, but it did not improve the environment that they were dependent on. Economic fluid, however, makes environmental improvements possible, as it flows across borders, boundaries and generations.

The economic attribute is a life-giving fluid that each person needs to survive, but it is more than that. It can be used to benefit all of humanity. People inherit the opportunity to use it because it naturally exists, but they also have creative power to use it to sustain and enhance the quality of life for themselves, for other people, and for other generations.

The political weapon, Economics, is not economic. It fails to embrace the constraints of reality. Ignoring the economic attribute is physically similar to having legs and refusing to use them to walk. Economics is an attribute. People can walk or pretend they don’t have legs. On the path to the future, which choice seems to make more sense? Shall we block the path, or shall we stride forward?